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| 'Island Time' 8x10 pastel ©Karen Margulis available $150 |
It is an inevitable result of painting. Pastels wear down. They break. We are left with bits and pieces of once favorite colors. My big studio box is filled with these tiny pieces. I can't bear to part with them. But they are really too small to use. Or are they?
Don't throw them out! Bits and Pieces of pastel can be used. We can always crush them and make new pastels. I have not done this but it is on my list of things to try. I use my pastel bits in two ways. I save them for my tiny travel kits. I also put them in my 'spice jars'.
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| My collection of pastel spices |
When my pastels get too small to hold comfortably I put them in little containers. I like to use plastic baby food containers. They are small, can stack and allow quick and easy access to the pastels. Any color can be used as spices. It depends on the painting. If you are organized you can keep colors separated. I am not that organized so I tend to have a mix of colors in my spice containers. I choose the spice color by scanning my containers and choosing the color that I think will work.
My color choices are mostly intuitive but if I am not sure of the right spice color I will use a color wheel. See my post on choosing spice colors here.
The photo below shows the painting at the end of the video demo I did for my Patreon page. This is before I added the spices. Can you see what I added?
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| Before the final spices |
1 comment:
Re: crushing bits of pastels to make new ones - I've done this quite a bit, and it's great! I've also done this with existing pastels that I never use (like some of my bright oranges, reds and blues) to combine for grays that I'm often missing in my collection.
Most recently, I ground up bits of all the greens I had, and ended up with a kind of amazing neutral green/gray that I'm using a lot. Ditto some blues to create a blue-gray that I am finding myself using a lot.
Some tips that I've found work best: 1) after you grind the pastels together, empty the powder into either a small plastic baggie or place the pile of powder on a piece of plastic or foil, make a little clearing in the center of the pile, and instead of adding water, add rubbing alcohol. This will always "wet" the dust, whereas with certain brands, the water remains in drops and won't mix (plus, rubbing alchol dries quicker). 2) I use a palette knife to blend everything together, and you don't want a slurry but a thicker paste, since that's easier to manipulate into your desired shape. However, if it's too dry, it won't form a cohesive pastel. I also use the piece of saran wrap (which I prefer to a baggie now) to knead the pastel, and then I usually roll it a bit before squaring up the edges as much as I can. 3) after the new pastel is shaped, set it somewhere to dry...for 24 hrs.
Another thing I've done is grind up pastels to make a powder that I keep in small baggies that I can use as a modifier, or if I ground up some full sized colors and mixed them and don't need more than one pastel of that mix at a time.
Cheers,
-Sonya
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